Optimize the Omnichannel Sales in Your Retail with an Inventory System

Multiple Channels = Increased Need for Inventory Management

In our digital age, it’s not enough to just set up a sign in front of your store, place the chair by the cash register, and expect sales to roll in. More sales channels are necessary to capture your potential customers when running a retail business.

Sales come from all directions like an airport during the summer holiday season, and they depart from various platforms: the physical store with a POS, a webshop, manually entered orders, social media, or apps – at all times of the day.

If you lose track of this sales traffic, it becomes difficult to deliver the service your customers expect. That’s why it is crucial to have a consolidated overview of your sales channels and efficient inventory management.

The challenge with omnichannel retail is coordinating the different channels so that customers always receive the correct items in their orders on time. Simultaneously, you need to avoid overstocking, which costs a lot in tied-up capital, or understocking, which can significantly delay deliveries.

This is where a dedicated inventory management system comes into play.

But why exactly does an inventory system make a difference when you run omnichannel sales in retail? We’ve gathered five reasons in this post.

The Importance of a Dedicated Inventory Management System in Retail

A dedicated inventory management system plays a critical role for retail businesses operating across multiple sales channels. It can integrate with most POS and webshop providers, giving you optimal order management as all your sales automatically flow into one manageable overview, so you never lose track.

At the same time, you can generate reports on your sales, enabling you to monitor product performance and optimize and adjust your purchases according to what sells well and what sits idle on the shelf.

Besides consolidating sales channels and generating reports, there are several other benefits to implementing an inventory system in your omnichannel strategy. Here are the five most important:

5 Features of an Inventory Management System that Strengthen Omnichannel Retail Sales

1. Real-time Inventory Updates

As soon as an inventory adjustment, purchase, or sale is recorded in the system, your stock levels are updated immediately. This means you can always look up an item, whether you are in the store, at your computer, or checking on your inventory app, and get direct insights into how many items you have in stock at each location and sales channel.

2. Reorder Reminders

By setting a minimum threshold for stock levels for each item, you can receive reminders when the stock approaches this threshold. This ensures that you can place reorders in time before the inventory runs too low to meet customer demand, allowing you to maintain optimal stock levels across all sales channels.

3. Automatic Adjustment of Average Cost Price

In a dedicated inventory system, the average cost price of your items is updated as soon as they are registered in the system. This means that if the purchase price of a product increases, the average cost price is adjusted automatically without manual calculations. This feature allows you to quickly adjust the sales price to compensate for the increased purchase price and ensure you maintain the desired profit margin across your sales channels.

4. Purchase Management

An inventory system can streamline your purchasing management by ordering items directly from your suppliers, simplifying the procurement process and ensuring you always have the necessary items in stock. The system offers flexible ordering and receiving of goods, so you can quickly update your stock levels as soon as the items arrive.

5. Location Management

With location management, you can monitor item placements down to the shelf level. You can create all the storage locations you need, including sub-locations like shelves, racks, or rows. Additionally, you can specify a transit location for temporary storage of orders under processing. This allows you to track ongoing orders, record the movement of goods between internal locations, and generate reports for each location.

Optimize Your Omnichannel Sales with Rackbeat

Effective inventory management is crucial for success in omnichannel retail, where system integration, real-time updates, purchase management, and location management play a central role. By implementing Rackbeat’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), businesses can significantly improve their inventory handling, minimize costs, and enhance the customer experience. Rackbeat consolidates sales channels and provides a clear and accurate overview of inventory status, which is key to thriving in a competitive digital market.

To fully leverage the potential of your omnichannel strategy, consider gaining deeper insights into how Rackbeat can support and optimize your business model. Learn more about how Rackbeat can help you achieve a more organized and efficient sales and inventory management process.